Hunter Schafer's horror girl potential should come out unscathed, if not, higher from this. She's great, and probably lends her character a lot more dramatic depth than what the movie around her has to offer. Dan Stevens is good at what he does, too, except that what he does is too obvious of a direction to take his character in. The entertainment value is there, at least.
This is a befuddling movie. It has the veneer of being competently put…
Compellingly crafted, but too smug about its own moral rectitude for my taste. Does the literal winking moments of the director delivering his scolds about violence in entertainment -- which, yes, often exploits its characters and relies on fascist aesthetics, etc -- actually convince us or make us feel guilty that all of this is bad? No, not really.
That Haneke's intentions are obvious without these fourth-wall interventions, from the non-diegetic Zorn metal track blasting in the car instead of…
Why did I have this pegged as a minor Miike? I was dead wrong. Rips from start to finish, garnished (or blemished?) with those zany, transgressive schticks of Miike humor we all know and love from a lot more fucked up movies. This is probably a good place to start with him for the normal but adventurous Movie Enjoyer. It's not too fucked up for movie night, in other words. But plenty of romps, kills, and moments of triumphant insanity.…
This and Pig are Nic Cage's best work in years. He's totally subsumed within his role as a schlubby, loser professor and tragically middle aged dad. That's worth the price of admission alone. I was laughing non-stop for the first 40 minutes! So was the audience. The dream scenarios are an oddball way to approach modern celebritydom, how random and ephemeral it is, how it puts people on pedestals as quickly as it tarnishes them as pariahs for things in…
